Hacker News Reader

Comment by Hokusai | Hacker News Reader

> 500 ground positions, 300 cabin crew positions and 300 cockpit positions and approximately 400 positions at KLM subsidiaries and Air France-KLM group functions

Non-skilled employees are for a tough ride as a crisis is when most people loses their jobs, and it is when it is more difficult to find a new one.

But, this is appalling news for many highly specialized employees. Many of them had a career in fly-related fields.

To have skills on an industry that suddenly disappears under your feet is the nightmare of any skilled worker.

The software industry slowly re-invents itself, and one needs to keep up to date. But, it has never been such a turning point so fast and that seems that is going to last for long.

View on HN

Phrasing here is weird how "non skilled" people in for a "tough right", but for skilled people this news is "appalling".

Seperately, I'm a developer and I stopped working in March due to reasons unrelated to COVID-19 and now I'm finding it exceptionally hard to get back in and find a job.

That can be explained by most companies operating with a hiring freeze right now.

I was interviewing with a few companies and all but 1 froze hiring during the process. I think it's to insulate from economic shock; nobody knows how bad each company may be hit.

Yup. I know.

Still sucks when you can’t get a job. I too thought because I was a smart web developer that I would always be able to make so. Oops.

In the same boat but more a DevOps type here (split time between developing and doing operations). Have some offers already due to being fortunate enough to have someone recommend me in those companies, i think that is still the best way to find a new job.

You must not have been around in 2000. That was a wild ride even for techies.

Oh, come on — it was a wild ride if you were employed in an unsustainable VC-funded startup in the US. But the bubble bursting barely even registered for those in larger companies, dealing with longer-term software.

Doesn't negate the fact that there was a drop in demand for those skilled workers during that time.

I feel you're unfairly conflating a 50+ year stable industry with relative job safety vs a decade of flash growth in a brand new industry.

> it was a wild ride if you were employed in an unsustainable VC-funded startup in the US

Does it matter? Also, there were loads of techs/devs hired for year 2000 bugfixing. After 2000 it took a while to find something else for them or let them go. Quite a huge amount could not find anything to do after 2000.

I remember being at a large company in 2001 that was forced to shed about 40% of the workforce: Accenture (which went from 40k employees to a bit over half that.) Same story for most of the large systems integration consultancies.

Same story for many of our clients: telecom firms, financial services firms

People remember 2000 as a tech startup bubble burst. But it was just as much a bubble burst for telecom (AT&T, Global Crossing, Lucent, others), financial services firms, and consultancies.

It's probably not so dramatic.

> based on the current measures, which include the non-renewal of temporary contracts (1,500 FTEs) and the Voluntarily Departure Scheme (2,000 FTEs). Additionally, natural attrition (500 FTEs) through retirement and the like

Voluntarily Departure Scheme will most likely provide a nice compensation package and people nearing retirement will simply not be replaced by new hires.

> Voluntarily Departure Scheme will most likely provide a nice compensation package and people nearing retirement will simply not be replaced by new hires.

It would be tremendously helpful for layoff notices to improve on the communications of this point, as folks who can be provided a gentle glidepath to retirement are in a different situation than someone who still has many years or decades ahead of them in the workforce and is thrown into a pandemic job market.

"Skilled" employees will be in for a rude awakening if this continues. Airlines are not building planes right? So they don't need as many skilled workers, they will also cut down aeronautic engineers, software engineers, accountants, lawyers, etc. There are lots of industries that support them too. If this continues, it will cascade like a domino effect.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com